In a typical mobile communication environment, a user equipment (UE) may communicate voice and/or data signals with one or more service networks via cellular stations of the service networks. The wireless communications between the UE and the service networks may be in compliance with various wireless technologies, such as the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) technology, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology, Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) technology, Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) technology, Code Division Multiple Access 2000 (CDMA 2000) technology, Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) technology, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology, Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) technology, and others.
In recent years, due to a substantial growth in cloud computing and network demand, a new generation of mobile communication system (5G) has been proposed. The new-generation mobile communication system has low latency, high loading and higher consistency feature requirements. In order to achieve the low-latency feature mentioned above, a new network framework known as Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) has come to be. MEC generally involves placing a server at the proximal end of the backhaul network of the base station and constructing a lightweight cloud that accommodates cloud computing and storage capabilities in order to intercept data sent back to the backend core network to the server for computing processing, thereby moving application services traditionally setup in the data center to the Mobile Edge Platform (MEP), allowing users to use application services deployed on the MEP and featuring the following advantages: (1) Nearby users can effectively decrease the service latency time; (2) Data on MEC can effectively reduce the load of data transmitted through the core network; (3) Provide service quality parameters at the wireless network end in order to ensure service quality, thereby enhancing user experience.
The existing MEC structure should support smart relocation. That is, when the user is accessing a service on MEP, if the user needs to move between MEPs to access new MEPs, the service in use must simultaneously carry out migration as the user moves. In the data center environment, the service data is located in the virtual machine/container on MEP. Conventionally, when a service is to be migrated, all the data in the virtual machine/container should be moved, resulting in time-consuming and huge data volume migration in excess. At the same time, in the MEC environment, if the user continues to move, switch to and access different MEPs, the virtual machine/container will need to constantly migrate, leading to diminished system performance. In addition, during service migration, since only newly added data in the original virtual machine/container is targeted for migration, the newly added data may not belong to the moving user, thus wasting network resources and transmission time.